Friday, October 4, 2013

Quote of the day: It all comes down to how expansively you define “Them”

The Republican Party is divided into three factions: The Religious Right, the Tea Party Right, and the Corporatist Right. There’s lots of crossover based on shared beliefs that they are the only true and truly deserving Americans, the real owners of the place, that there are privileges that come with ownership, and that there’s a great mob of Others, a Them, trying to take the country from them and deny them their privileges.

The corporatists just define Them a little more broadly.

By Them, the Religious Right and the Tea Party Right mean those who don’t look like “us”, who don’t talk like “us”, who don’t believe exactly what “we” believe. The corporatists mean everybody who isn’t rich, which includes most members of the Religious Right and the Tea Party Right who haven’t caught on that many of their fellow Republicans regard them as Them.

Nothstine is a writer, editor, political junkie, and renegade professor. Contact him here.

*Why p3?

"A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance, and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others." -Thomas Jefferson (1826)